For 38 years, she coached college hoops—the legendary University of
Tennessee Lady Vols—capturing eight national championships and setting
the all-time record for wins. Before that she was a formidable
"slasher" and cocaptain of the first U.S. women's Olympic
basketball team. Diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2011, the
indomitable Pat Summitt now faces the fight of her life.

I remember a Tennessee field with hay as far as I could see and a tall man
standing in it, staring at me with pale blue eyes. My father had eyes that
gave me the feeling he could order up any kind of weather he wanted, just by
looking at the sky. If the tobacco crop needed rain, he'd glare upward,
until I swore it got cloudy. I gestured at the acres of hay I was supposed to
rake into bales and said, "Daddy, how long do I have to stay out here?" He said, "You'll be finished when it's done right."

I remember a leaning gray barn with an iron basketball rim mounted in the
hayloft. At night—after the chores were done right—my three older
brothers and I climbed to the loft for ball games in which they offered no
quarter. Just elbows and fists, and the advice, "Don't you cry, girl.
I better not see you cry." I remember learning to hit back—hard
enough to send them through the gallery door into a ten-foot drop to the bales
below.

I remember the supper table crammed with bodies, children with clattering
forks fighting over the last piece of chicken, and my mild, selfless mother,
filling the glasses and plates with a close-lipped smile and a voice soft as a
housedress, and then I remember watching her muscle a two-ton truck into gear
and roaring off to pick up farm supplies.

I remember the searing smell of the ammonia that my college coach waved under
my nose, and heavy polyester uniforms with crooked numerals, and the dark
hotbox auxiliary gyms with no air-conditioning where they stuck women, one
leaking light from holes in the roof, through which birds flapped and
splattered their droppings on the floor.

I remember being young and wild with energy, pulling into joints that sold 20-cent beer.

"What's your brand?"

"Cold."

I remember standing on a medal podium at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, imbued
with a sense that if you won enough basketball games, there was no such thing
as poor, backward, country, female, or inferior.

I remember every player—every single one—who wore the Tennessee
orange, a bold, aggravating color usually found on a roadside crew, or in a
correctional institution. To us, the color is a flag of pride, identifying us
as Lady Vols and therefore as women of an unmistakable type. Fighters. I
remember how many of them fought for a better life. I just met them halfway.

I remember the faces of the young women who ran suicide drills, flame-lunged
and set-jawed, while I drove them on with a stare that burned up the ground. I
remember the sound of my own voice shouting, "Sprint through the
line." Urgent, determined. "Don't ever let other people
tell you who you are!" Exasperated, mocking, baiting. "Get out of the
drill. Just get out. Put someone in who can throw a pass."

I remember being able to almost read their thoughts. That lady is crazy;
why is she torturing us? (They embellish.) I can't satisfy her;
what does she want from me? (Only everything.) Man, I'm getting a
bus ticket back to New York. Or Indiana. Or Oregon. Or coal-country
Kentucky.

"Yeah, I would recommend playing for Pat Summitt," Abby Conklin, a
former player, liked to say, "if a year of counseling comes with it."